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Spring 6-3-2015

Gender, Family, and Morality in Ben Jonson’s Volpone

Shanelle Kim
Andrews University

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Kim, Shanelle, "Gender, Family, and Morality in Ben Jonson’s Volpone" (2015). Posters, Presentations, and
Papers. 13.

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 Gender, Family, and Morality in Ben Jonson’s Volpone
Shanelle Kim | Advisor: Dr. L. M. Pittman
Abstract
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, the
transformation in categories of value resulting from a money
economy clashed with older forms of institutionalized values. Ben
Jonson’s dramatic satire Volpone (1606) diagnoses social ills arising
from the emerging proto-capitalist culture of his time. Though Jonson
critiques the corrosive impact of a money culture, the two distinct
embodiments of moral good in Jonson’s play, Celia and Bonario,
prove ineffective in battling the creeping value transformations
associated with money. In part, their failure derives from systemic
fissures in Early Modern understandings of the family unit and
gendered roles within such a structure. Celia as wife and Bonario as
eldest son and heir occupy distinct gendered family roles that hinder
their respective abilities to combat eroding morals and encroaching
economic change. My project combines a close reading of Celia and
Bonario as dramatized in Jonson’s play with a careful study of
sixteenth-century conduct books that articulate understandings of the
family unit and gender roles during a time of proto-capitalist
transition.
Methodology
Close textual analysis: Examines the specific components of a key
passage of the text, such as word choice, definition, and rhythm, to
enhance understanding of the work. Looks for underlying patterns
and weighs the preponderance of evidence used for argumentation.
New Historicism: A critical theory that examines a work of literature
within the context of the moment of history it was written in and
looks at the power dynamics within a text.
Ø 16th century England: A period of burgeoning proto-capitalist
changes; began to emphasize the importance of the individual
Ø Conduct books: Provided instructions on how individuals ought
to behave as members of a patriarchal, familial society;
emphasized the individual as part of a community
Problems with
proto-capitalism in Volpone
Ø 16th-17th century: major economic change
Ø Population growth led to competition within the labor market;
increasingly meritocratic economy
Ø Identity linked to one’s value in the market
Ø Heightened emphasis on individuality; led to concerns over
perceived threats to a divinely-ordained social hierarchy and to
human relations
  1500-1900.Vol. 31, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (1991): 287-308. JSTOR.
Ø Volpone echoes these concerns by depicting plots that involve
endangered familial relations
v Bonario’s disinheritance for the sake of his father’s greed
  1568. EEBO. Web. 21 May 2014.
v Jealous Corvino’s willing prostitution of his wife to
Volpone
Earhart Emerging Scholars Award
Analysis
Bonario, the firstborn male
His ineptitude
Ø Heir to a wealthy father, name means “good-natured”
Ø Speeches about morality
Ø However, is easily manipulated by the others’ schemes (Act 3)
How traditional structures restrict his freedom to act
Ø Displays a strict adherence to the exacting and contradictory
rules and societal norms of the old feudalist culture wherein
obedience to a parent is the basis of a child’s morality
Ø “Sir, I will sit down, / And rather wish my innocence should
suffer / Than I resist the authority of a father” (4.5.111).
Robert Cleaver, A godly form of householde government (1598):
Ø Children must “obey their Parents, and doo serve them, and
also do feare, love, honour, and reverence them” (A3R).
Ø “Children have always to remember, that . . . when they
disobey [their parents], they disobey God” (Aa3R)
Ø “Also children must be carefull to follow the good examples
of their fathers” (Aa3V)
Celia, the faithful wife
How strict patriarchal standards keep her in a vulnerable
state
Ø Like Bonario, Celia displays a compliance with the virtues of
an older England—one that expected a wife to obey her
husband without question.
Ø Begs Corvino, her husband, for mercy, but never resists him
Ø “Sir, what you please, you may; I am your martyr” (3.7.107).
Edmund Tilney, The Flower of Friendship (1577):
Ø “For in nothing can a wife shewe a greater wisedome, than in
dissembling with an importunate husbande. Her honestye, her
good nature, and her praise is shewed in nothing more, then
in tolerating of an undiscrete man: and to conclude, as the
woman ought not to command the man but to be always
obedient” (C2R)
Ø “For a good name is the flower of estimation, and the pearle
of credite, which is so delicate a thing in a woman, that she
must not onely be good, but likewise must appeare so” (C2V)
Ø “For disobedience is a fault in all persons, but the greatest
vice in a woman” (D3R)
Conclusions
The characters of Bonario and Celia in Ben Jonson’s Volpone
have traditionally disregarded by scholars for their inability
and seeming unwillingness to combat evil. However, little
thought has been given to what keeps them from being able
to act. Bonario and Celia, though they occupy different
positions in society, both demonstrate a morality based on
the strict performance of one’s role in a traditional
patriarchal system. However, Volpone reveals that traditional
morality fails the two characters as they fall prey to the
circumstances other, far more degenerate characters create.
This failure, Volpone demonstrates, stems from the fact that
the success of the traditional model for the family and for
society depended on the full participation of each individual
member. Such a model, however, offers no solutions for the
fight against evil when some members choose to act against
their prescribed role in the family and in society.
Bonario and Celia, then, demonstrate a clash between the
tenets of a longheld and revered society, which emphasized
the importance of the individual only as part of a larger
community, and that of a nascent proto-capitalist culture,
which sought to elevate the individual according to ability.
Volpone does more than showcase the destructive nature of
avarice and the ineffectiveness of morality against--it
explores the conflict between the individual and the
community and the clash between a traditional model of
society and the dawn of a money-driven culture.
Bibliography
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